I noticed back last summer that the more viruently anti-Trump a commentator was, the more likely they were to employ the same reasoning and methods that Trump himself used. Logical fallacies. Half-truths. And “bullrushing” those who disagree with a emotional attack with incendiary language.

In a liberal democracy like the US, there is one custom which is absolutely required in order for that democracy to survive: after the election, the parties have to put their knives away and resist through political channels. The Republicans did just that after Obama won in 2008. Their resistance was in the POLITICAL sphere; nobody went around blackballing Obama supporters or disrupting in the streets.

Here’s an uncomfortable fact: There’s really nothing that Trump is (or isn’t) that is new to the Presidency. You can’t be up in arms about Trump’s alleged pussy-grabbing and not care about Bill Clinton’s peccadilloes or JFK’s sex parties. You can’t flip out about about Trump’s travel ban while you’re using minute, hairpin rationalizations to explain why is was OK that Obama did basically the same thing. If you think the wall is the worst thing in the world, you have to somehow manage the fact that just a few years ago, the authorization to build it was passed by bipartisan majorities. And if you’re terrified that Jeff Sessions is going to have ICE deporting people all over the nation, you must come to grips with the fact that most of the laws he uses to do so were Democratic proposals passed by bipartisan majority.

We are where we are. And right now, the biggest risk to the Republic is that there are illiberal neoMarxists afoot who wish to bring down the POTUS at any cost — — and are naive to what that cost might be.